Opinion: Patricia L Johnson

All along I’ve considered the Republican attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to be nothing more than another opportunity to tarnish the reputation of the former secretary simply due to the fact she is a Democrat. Now I’m wondering if the continual attacks against her character have nothing whatsoever to do with politics and are strictly due to the fact she is a female. Remember it’s a man’s world out there and will continue to be until the Equal Rights Amendment is passed providing equal status to both sexes.

The Equal Rights Amendment was originally written in 1923 by Alice Paul and consisted of three sentences as follows:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

In 1971 the Equal Rights Amendment was approved by the U.S. House by a vote of 354-24 and on March 22, 1972 the U.S. Senate passed the bill by a vote of 84-8, but in order for it to become an amendment to the Constitution three-fourths of the states, or 38 states, were required for ratification. To date only 35 states have ratified, even though the amendment has been submitted to every Congress since 1982. During the 113^th Congress (2013-2014) the wording was changed slightly to incorporate the word “Women”). Whether or not the bill will be submitted in the 114^th Congress (2015-2016) is yet to be determined.

The fact is as of right now the women in the country are not equal to the men, so why wouldn’t the men be able to question any and every task performed by a member of the female sex, which they have consistently tried to do with former Secretary of State Clinton.

Let’s take a look at Benghazi. How many investigations are the taxpayers of this country going to pay for to get to the bottom of Benghazi? How many investigations have they already completed? I just don’t remember, but I think the last count was astronomical and they still haven’t come up with any damaging evidence to prove any wrongdoing by the former Secretary.

The question every taxpayer in this country should ask themselves is why it is that so many Congressional Investigations have been made on Benghazi, where four Americans were killed, versus how many investigations have been made on Iraq where innocent Iraqi’s are still being killed on a daily basis? Our unwarranted attack on Iraq was, and will forever continue to be, the biggest mistake this country has ever made, yet our Congress is spending an incredible amount of time and U.S. dollars on investigations that have proved over and over again what happened in Benghazi, instead of trying to determine what action must be taken to avoid further errors like the one made in Iraq.

The business about e-mails is no more than another attempt by the Republicans to disgrace a woman who has spent her entire life serving this country. Nowhere, in any of the material I’ve read about the latest so-called e-mail scandal has it stated what the rules were regarding e-mails during Secretary of Clinton’s term in office, from January 21, 2009 to February 1, 2013.

Unfortunately, the actual facts in any story don’t seem to come into play when there’s a possible scandal brewing. Our media jumps on the first indication of an indiscretion on the part of a female in a high position, and sets the wheels in motion. Perhaps they should all consider looking into the facts before they go charging off into the sunset.

My research indicates the allegations being made apply to rules that went into effect on September 9, 2013. Since Secretary of State Clinton left the State Department on February 1, 2013, it would be virtually impossible for her to have broken rules that weren’t yet in effect. This e-mail nonsense is nothing more than a ploy by the Republicans to gain access to additional information so they can continue to keep Benghazi on the front page during the next election cycle.

If they want a story to investigate, why don’t they try checking into this one? On September 11, 2001 we lost less than 3,000 individuals in the attacks on the World Trade Center, etc. At one time it was reported we lost more than 3,000, but when the dust settled the final number came in at less than 3,000. Why did Al Qaeda attack us? Osama’s Bin Laden’s video indicates it was an effort to stop us from supporting Israel as follows: “Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people.”

On October 7, 2001 President George W. Bush ordered the strikes against Afghanistan. On March 19, 2003 President George W. Bush began our “Shock and Awe” campaign against Iraq (without justification).

As of March 4, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. EST, a total of 6,849 defense personnel have been killed, and 52, 311 defense personnel have been wounded in action due to the actions taken by the former President in response to the 9/11 attacks. The numbers do not include the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians that have been killed, wounded or displaced.

Why are we allowing Members of Congress to waste taxpayer funds investigating frivolous allegations, when they could be spending their time investigating events that will continue to have an impact on our future?

Wouldn’t you like to know exactly what took place that allowed the former administration to make the terrible error they made in claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and bringing us into a war that apparently has no end? Wouldn’t you like all communications on that particular subject to be made public so the same mistake isn’t made in the future?

Wouldn’t you like to know why there are two separate sets of standards in this country? One for the man that caused almost 60,000 individuals to be killed or wounded since 9/11, and one for the woman that was not in way personally responsible for the deaths of four individuals killed in the Benghazi attack of November 12, 2012?

I would!

© 2015 Patricia L Johnson